Things functioning as expected - Whether it's parts of your body, your car, an appliance, or something else in your life... you don't realize how good it is for things to be normal and average until they're not. I know it's not the most specific reply, but in post race mode, I notice parts of my body aching that normally go by without any obvious feelings whatsoever. Like last night, I woke up and could feel my Achilles in addition to a sore throat. I could think of a million car and appliance ones, but batteries, tires and hot water heaters are jumping out in my mind.
Nail clippers - You may sense a theme here...my toes take a beating with the mileage I put in. It's already summery here and people are out and about in sandals with nice pedicures (ok, really a year round thing) but for me...I'm just happy if my toenails aren't too angry from the work I'm putting in. A lot of people who do distance work keep theirs cut way back. Sometimes pain or even a nail related blister is the sign that I missed a spot or forgot a toe (it happens). So, having clippers ready when I forget and my body reminds me is a blessing. I honestly never think about them until I need them.
Shampoo - Soaps, in general, remind me of a fellow peer's paper from back in my college days. It was our sophomore year writing class. Everyone was required to take Writing 1 and Writing 2 and the head of the dept picked a general theme for the semester and their group of TAs had to select an angle/sub-topic for their sections to further explore that overall theme. When I took Writing 2, rhetoric was the topic selected by the dept head and my TA picked mythology. Yes, we explored standard mythology but he expanded on that in some really unusual and creative ways. I'll never forget this one girl's presentation on the mythology of soap suds and how there was little to no scientific proof that suds production equated to higher degrees of cleanliness. She targeted advertising like bathroom cleaners with scrubbing bubbles and shampoo and bar soap commercials where actors were shown with tons of bubbles in a heavy lather. She compared it to more clinical cleansers that surgeons often use pre-op that provide minor amounts of bubbles as well as dry cleaning vs. washing machine detergents. I was reminded of this the other night when I was using my new shampoo to wash the race glitter out of my hair. I normally have very little proof that my shampoo gets my hair clean as I don't use a ton of product and I'm not prone to oily/greasy hair. But that day, I had glitter gel and a lack of glitter in the end served as proof that my shampoo worked. The college story factored in because the new shampoo I was using produced far fewer bubbles than my old stuff. So, its effectiveness got me thinking about how we often don't think about the effectiveness of our shampoo or the need (technically, lack of it) for bubbles.
*Side note- never any actual scientific testing on the bubble thing, but still interesting as far as an essay topic.
